


My Big Fat Doofenshmirtz Wedding

by Grassepi, WhatOtherPlanet



Category: Phineas and Ferb, Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Featuring the Kool-aid man, Multi, and the town of stornoway, prepare your body
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 12:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12817707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grassepi/pseuds/Grassepi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet
Summary: War erupts. Zarkon faces personal turmoil. Nothing will ever be the same.





	My Big Fat Doofenshmirtz Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> This one goes out to our spiritual partner Le Star-Lord, who only had a guest account but lives on in our hearts and gall bladders.

Monty didn’t work for the OWCA. He didn’t like his daddy's company, hated those scheming villains, detested the secrecy of it all. It wasn't the way he'd have chosen to do things, and they weren't things Monty wanted any part of to begin with. Monty just wanted to spend time with his girlfriend, get a job at the mall, live the normal teenage life. 

But he'd never had that choice. The normal teenage life didn’t want Monty. It never had.

He crept through the shadows of the laboratory, embracing the stygian darkness with the grace and candor of a komodo dragon with stilts hopped up on eight different kinds of narcotic. And not the lame kinds that little kids who read fanfiction would know. We're talking that wild candy. Like weed. And marijuanas.

A box fell off another, larger box. It made a sound like a box falling off another, larger box.

The void didn’t adhere to Monty. It never had. Monty got along with the void about as well as he got along with Perry the Platypus after Perry had just trounced him in five games of chess in a row.

Monty grimaced at the thought, dodging hastily into a convenient crevice as a searchlight passed him by. He wasn't bad at chess. Far from it. He liked chess. Had liked it since his father taught him the rules at the tender age of two, and ever since that day had scrawled each tactic and strategy over his fleshy grey brain like a dark scribe scrawls the words of his unworldly patron. The rook is his fortress of scarred and ancient stone. The queen is his shining darling honey, ready to kick ass, take names, and then make sure those names were submitted properly to the census-takers. The board, painted in starkest black and white, much like his father’s harsh view of the world, was his foundation. Chess was his home and his sanctuary.

But Perry had shattered that. In a single day, he'd disassembled Monty like a mover disassembles a cabinet after its owner dies at the age of ninety-seven and it's being moved out into storage while the lawyers try and interpret the will and sixteen grandkids swarm like vultures over the funeral home. Impersonally. With the slightest tinge of nostalgic regret. It's a good cabinet, but it has to go. That's how Perry had done it. That's how he'd broken Monty.

Monty grimaced at the thought, dodging hastily out of the convenient crevice and slipping over to a pile of crates, into which he bumped, because it was hard to control his momentum while slipping. He would do terrible things to Perry the Platypus, if he had a chance. Monty would play him in checkers. Monty would make Perry the Platypus cry.

But even then, Monty thought, could he? The life of an OWCA agent was one of shaded actions and shaded thoughts, all honed to razor-precision in the shade of a fedora brim. Perry had mastered strategy on levels way beyond Monty. Quantum levels. The kinds of levels where quarks hung out and did whatever the frick quarks did. That was the kind of level Perry was on.

The life of an OWCA agent was too much entrenched in shade and secrets for a guy like Monty. A guy like Monty was built to stand in the light. Instead, though, he ducked, and did not stand in the light, because the light was that spotlight and Monty was trying really hard not to die.

Somewhere in the distance, Monty heard the soft hum of machinery. The CHAMPION’s laboratory is vast and confusing, a maze of crates and spotlights and crevices. He steps through a doorway into a hallway which turned out to be a passageway to a gateway that opened onto the town of Stornoway, located on the Isle of Lewis, in Scotland. It was quite far away. Quite the getaway.

Monty turned around, focusing on regaining his bearings. He moved back into the room with the crates and the spotlights and the crevices, ducking and weaving like some kind of quacking spider until he finally found another doorway that led somewhere that wasn't in the U.K. As much as he'd like to spend some quality time in the Western Isles, his mission was too important.

See, Monty didn’t work for the OWCA, but Monty would do anything to keep the world safe for his friends. For his family. So here he is, skulking through the laboratory of the vile CHAMPION, looking for the his latest creation. 

The black lion. 

It’s a weapon of mass destruction, of death and suffering. The legends of it are still echoing through time from the remnants of the War. Monty shudders involuntarily just picturing the feline robot. It seems too horrific to exist in their world, as horrific as the way pineapples grow, as horrific as the way colouring pencils sort of fill in an area but not completely so some of the page is just irretrievably white unless you press so hard into the paper that there’s like an imprint in the paper that you can feel on your fingertips and the pencil crayon just gets whittled down so impossibly fast. So impossibly fast, as fast as a mariokart racer with 10 coins, providing the racer an extra boost. However, the booster is only provided when the racer has 10 coins, therefore many racers do not bother to collect coins, instead attempting to get ahead through sheer wits and skill. 

Monty fears the black lion, but even more so he fears what the CHAMPION could do with it.

A voice echoes down the corridor, sounding suspiciously like the CHAMPION’s seemingly more innocent consort. Many an agent has fallen to the henchman, taken in by his incredible cookies and heartwarmingly pure demeanour. There is nothing Monty would like better than to race down to the source of the noise and snuff it out. 

So many animals lost. So many families grieving. 

“CHAMPION, what are we going to do about the other lions? The OWCA won’t stop until they gain all the components they need for Voltron! I don’t want to see any more animals die, CHAMPION.” The seemingly kind man says. Monty scowls, refusing to be taken in by the henchman’s caring act. “What’s the point of this all, anyways?”

“R3v3ng…” The CHAMPONION says, scraping something metal against something else metal. Friction burns through Monty’s ears, harsh and screeching. “Th3 OWC4 mu5t D13.”

“CHAMPION, you’ve changed,” The henchman says. His voice is low, tired, like he’s had this argument a million times before. Monty creeps closer, knowing if he looks around the end of the corridor he’s in he’d see the pair. Self control is the only thing that keeps him from looking. “Why don’t you have a cookie and-”

Glass smashes and the henchman sighs in exasperation. This isn’t a night for cookies, both Monty and the CHAMPION seem to agree. Monty is instantly disgusted to find himself agreeing with the CHAMPION about anything. It’s a flavour of disgust similar to black licorice, to mayonnaise and black coffee. It’s a disgust like Monty feels at the OWCA’s failed recruit Coldstale the Hedgehorg (OC, do not steal pls), who still hangs around the office. They all know that Coldstaple doesn’t belong there. Coresteal doesn’t belong there just as much as chili dogs belong in Sonic’s stomach. As in to say, chili dogs should always be in Sonic’s stomach or hands or else a temporal rift will open in spacetime and the world will be destroyed. The only chili dog that is not in Sonic’s stomach or hand is locked away deep underground, behind steel walls and iron doors. The forbidden chili dog belongs to no one but itself. Callcenter tried to steal it once to prove his secret agent skills, but Perry killed Carbonite before the fool of a hedgehorg could. Perry is a masterful killer. 

Monty pretends he isn’t afraid of Perry, but he is. They all are.

Now Chillyman's corpse has been left strung up to a wall in the OWCA headquarters, a symbol of Perry’s skills and a warning against any other who would dare to steal the forbidden chili dog of doom. It smells like bad choices. 

“Look what you did! My cookies are everywhere, that glass could hurt someone, and oh gosh now we’re gonna have to go get another plate!” The henchman complains, but the CHAMPION isn’t listening. The supervillain stomps off, heavy footfalls leading away from Monty, away from the distressed baker. 

Monty seizes the moment.

He bolts down the corridor in the opposite direction of the henchman and the CHAMPION’s fading footsteps, taking a wild guess and hoping for the best. Monty should have learned years ago not to rely on luck and fate like that. All agents have to learn that things like luck and fate aren’t real. Only your knife is real, in the heat of a mission. Your knife and the beating of your enemy’s heart. 

But Monty isn’t an agent. Monty’s never been an agent. 

He takes the opening, runs for it, and tries to channel as much of Sonic possible as he charges down the corridor. Sonic, his friend, his mentor, his teacher. Sonic, who’s fought so many battles by his side, who’s guided him and helped him. Monty needs to run like the wind, needs all of Sonic’s teachings. So Monty runs like he’s never run before. 

This is Monty’s chance. 

* * *

 

"Monty just effing died yo."

Lord Zarkon, Emperor of the Galra, Grand Praetor of the Seven Galaxies, Chancellor-elect of the Rigellian Expanse, eight-time Gold-medalist figure-skater, and Space People (Speople) Magazine's #1 Father of the Year for sixteen years in a row, looked up from his newspaper, pushing his reading glasses down his nose. "What you say?"

Perry, leaning on the doorframe he stood in, took a long drag on the cuban cigar clunched in his bill. "You heard me Zark. Monty bit it." He pushed his shutter shades down his beak, cold eyes finding Zarkon's. There was no mourning there, no righteous rage. Only emptiness. There had been feelings once, in Perry the Platypus. But they were gone now. Beaten out of him long and hard over the years. By the war. By other things. All replaced with scars. Before, Perry had smiled. Perry had loved.

Now, Perry only scowled, and chewed his cigar as he read off the death of another agent like a particularly uninteresting bout of weather.

Zarkon, despite being about ten thousand years older, still had a little life left in him though. He'd yet to learn the hard truths of the world, the truths that turn hard men into even harder men and turn kind platypuses (pi?) into rugged, sharp platypi (puses?). Angular platypiuses. The kind of platypusies (ew no) which Zarkon might, in his darkest, most secret dreams, nurse the slightest fancy for. The kind about whom Zarkon might have an entire second, secret diary. One with extra locks and five "do not enter: PRIVATE" stickers, which was hidden in a hole he'd cut in his mattress. Hypothetically.

"You gotta give me more than that, Perry," Zarkon said. He sipped his coffee, which was as black as his soul but also had cream honey milk sugar and frosted flakes in it. "Monty was a good kid. What went down?"

Perry puffed out a breath of smoke through his bill. He pushed his shutter shades down his beak, cold eyes meeting Zarkon's. He was a hard mammal. Hardened by the war. By other things. "Don't know yet," he said. He produced a knife, and started to fiddle with it, spinning it between his weird little platypus fingers. It really called things into question actually. Platypuses (Platypi) don't usually have fingers per se—their forelimbs end in webbed flippers. So exactly how Perry had functional fingers was a mystery. But they certainly helped Perry play with his knife, which was shiny and very sharp.

The knife was from a certain manufacturer, a business partner who preferred to remain anonymous. But the OWCA wasn’t fricking around and had of course found the identity of the manufacturer years ago. It was one of Sonic’s first missions- a throwback for the entire OWCA. A time before Sonic was a seasoned agent, before Sonic was taking on students and running the place. A strange time, probably. Zarkon didn’t like to think about that time much, as he didn’t like to think about many things. Zarkon was a galra of action, not thought. It was how he’d conquered so many galaxies, so many planets. It was what his mother taught him. Act first, shoot second, think later. Really, his mother was probably the key to his success as the Galra Emperor. A shame about what happened to her in the war. What Sonic taught Zarkon was only additions to the basics his mother had taught him, in the end. 

Sonic had found out the manufacturer was actually a legendary intergalactic icon- someone Zarkon knew well, a vigilante who’d been able to escape from his empire time after time. 

Balloony, may his name be cursed to the end of the universe and back. Zarkon doesn’t know how the old balloon had fallen into weapons manufacturing, but he was dang doggity good at it. The blade Perry wields is seasoned with the blood of hundreds, thousands of enemies. Never has there been a material that knife couldn’t cut. Whatever Balloony is using to make those weapons, Zarkon wants for his empire. Not that Balloony will ever give up the secret formula. Haggar has been sending convoys to parlay with the balloon for years, and never once has there been a single hint of weakness in Balloony. Well, as they say, like weapon, like manufacturer. 

Zarkon thinks back to the first time he met Balloony, seven years ago when Big Mitch was still by Balloony’s side. They’d been a good pair, the two of them. Balanced each other out. Big Mitch would drink too much, Balloony couldn’t drink at all. Zarkon drank exactly as much as he wanted. He could always handle it. It was fun, partying with them. Whenever being the Galra Emperor was just too stressful to handle anymore, he would turn to them to take him out to some wild club somewhere. They were always a delight to hang out with.  

Until Big Mitch died in the war. 

Now Balloony is alone and heartless, churning out impossibly good weapons to anyone who will buy them. The CHAMPION. OWCA. That mysterious beaver who shows up to throw a dagger at Haggar’s head every once in awhile. 

Zarkon misses who the balloon used to be. Wishes he could help somehow. But here he is, drinking his coffee, reading the newspaper. Perry wielding that beautiful, stunning, sharp-edged knife. 

And Balloony is just a balloon in space, making good weapons. 

They’ve grown so far apart. Zarkon couldn’t do anything now if he wanted. It’s too late for that. 

It’s too late for a lot of things. 

“So what are we gonna do ‘bout it?” Zarkon finally brings himself to ask, tearing his thoughts away from the memories of Balloony as viciously as Perry is known to cut down his enemies. Sentimentality gets you nowhere in this line of work. Sentimentality gets you face down in a ditch, your fedora stained with tears and rain. Stained with all manner of wet things. 

Perry rolls his beady little platypi eyes, just barely visible under the shadow of his hat brim. “Ain’t it obvious? We’re gonna pay the CHAMP a visit.”

Perry snaps his horrid little platypus fingers.

Like the second coming of the kool aid man himself, the big man full of the chug, a giant blue metal lion bursts through the kitchen wall with the power of the cosmos. Zarkon’s seen wonders, but none have sated his appetite for destruction and feline robots like this grand mechanical beast. The hulking lion can’t fit through the wall, only its head popping through. There is rubble and carnage everywhere, but they fit the messy vibe of Zarkon’s apartment anyways. From the chili dogs littered on the floor and tucked away in stray corners- evidence of a dear mentor and friend- and random impaled knives in the wall from Perry making a dramatic entrance, the stone blocks feel at home on his floor. Zarkon, in his heart, has already welcomed the stone. The stone is cold, and dark, like his heart. A gaping wound in the wall provides a pleasant breeze, reminding Zarkon of defeated empires and blazing cities below him. Destruction is Zarkon’s only home, so it’s fitting his apartment would be filled with the likes of it. 

However, with Perry smugly smirking at him like that, Zarkon cannot stand by and squirm like a worm being fried under a microscope. Zarkon has earned his fedora, just as Perry has his. 

“My wall!” Zarkon cries, hoping to convey the full extent of his masculine authority and pride. Perry dismisses Zarkon’s bluster with a simple look. A hard look, a bloody look. Hardened by the war. By other things.

Smoke hits the ceiling as Perry takes another long drag, the smell familiar. Familiar as the glare on Perry’s face, familiar as the scent of Haggar on Zarkon’s cloak after he’s given it to her for dry cleaning. But not comforting. Nothing about the platypus is ever comforting, not for someone like Zarkon, who has walked beside him as he blazes his warpath- one much more personal and indiscriminate than Zarkon’s own. Perry has goals. Perry has marks. Perry has vendettas and enemies, not that those enemies ever last long. 

The brim of Perry’s fedora falls over that hardened look in his eyes, shadows swinging dramatically- Zarkon gulps nervously at the expertise in the gesture. All of the agents of OWCA are trained in usage of the fedora, from the tiniest snail to the largest alien emperor from another world. How to shadow things with it. How to tailor it. How to sleep on it without crinkling it. 

Perry has the fedora work of a master. Zarkon’s just a little aroused by it- the cut of Perry’s smile, the curls of white smoke wafting through the room, the edge of the animal’s blade. Hot. Sharp. Violent. Shivers crawl down Zarkon’s spine as Perry starts to thumb the edge of the blade. The Balloony blade. Unparalleled. 

But no. Zarkon has a boyfriend. He can’t be wooed by the soft looking fur brushing over Perry’s turquoise blue skin, glistening with a slight film of sweat milk….

He can’t be wooed by the delicate turn of Perry’s mouth when the platypus smiles. The lilt to his face, the creases and lines falling away into something peaceful for once. Rare as the expression is, Zarkon can feel the weight of every Perry smile, can feel the specialness of the moment. Zarkon can feel Perry smile, and he treasures it. 

He can’t be wooed by Perry’s turn of his speech, the growls and animalistic huffing noises that seem to come out uncontrollably, in moments of distress. Zarkon could swoon at the purr of his platypus beak alone. He tries not to imagine how that vibration could feel, what noises Perry might make in the heat of another kind of moment…

But Zarkon has a boyfriend. Zarkon has a boyfriend who he loves dearly. Thace, his darling boobaloo. His muscled honeybear. His beautiful honey nut cheerio. 

Zarkon likes honey nut cheerios. 

“Let’s go.” Perry says, spits out the cigarette, stamps on it with the bare of his underfoot. Zarkon tries to repress the blush on his cheeks, finds he can’t. That’s okay. Perry doesn’t look at him anyways. All two feet of him are staring up at the lion. Zarkon is ignored, and he finds he likes it. 

Thace never ignores him. Thace is kind and loving and supportive. Zarkon already has enough excitement in his life with conquering the galaxy, keeping Haggar out of his diary, trying to find the black lions and voltron, and being an OWCA agent. He doesn’t need a Perry. The Galran Emperor only needs a Thace. 

They get in the blue lion. The skies fade to dark outside, rain clouds drifting in, as if the world itself is crying for the loss of Monty. Perry effortlessly drives them out towards the wastes where the CHAMP’s lab stands.

Connecticut.

* * *

 

The CHAMP's laboratory stood like a scar on the barren wasted land. Connecticut hadn't been the same since his glorious arrival, and the outflow from this vile center of vileness long ago ensured that it likely never would again. Which would have been a shame, if anyone had actually lived in Connecticut to begin with.

Fortunately for the hypothetical citizens of Connecticut, and unfortunately for the rest of the sane and righteous universe, the Nutmeg State had been a government plot since the very beginning, keystone to a conspiracy going back to old Ramses himself, and further, back to the Chinese scholars and to the foundations of life on Earth, the secret history written in the other half of the Dead Sea Scrolls—scrolls locked in the deepest vaults of the vatican, vaults which the papal seal could not unbar—the grand plan towards which humanity was ever marching, oblivious and helpless in the face of architectures cosmic and uncaring.

Those who claimed to come from Connecticut were a carefully curated breed. Most were brainwashed, distinguished by a small triangle of discolored skin on the inner left thigh. The others, those without marking at all, were far more dangerous. Agents of the Others, acting in interests beyond the reach of common mankind. All of them existed for one purpose: to ensure the isolation of the state until the promised actions could be completed.

Connecticut had only truly been inhabited by sixteen priests, a slightly confused rabbi, and four hundred unclothed and fragile taxmen, screaming and endless. They were gone now—their part on the plan long since passed, with the exception of the rabbi who now worked as an exchange clerk in DC—and so, save for the CHAMPION and his grim seneschals, there was no living soul to witness as the Blue Lion roared in across the fading sunlit sky.

But the CHAMP did witness them, standing in his grim command tower, rising like a long obsidian thing into the air. Very tall. He liked being high up. He saw them, and his fingers, the left ones, those forged of cosmic steel and laced with starfire, clenched tight around the Gun.

"At last," he said. "The time has come."

He cast his hand out—the flesh hand; the other one was busy  _ clenching. _ "Go, my soldiers! Crush their wills and bring the Lion to me!" Then he smirked, turning to the side and raising one eyebrow in a look eminently familiar to anyone who's watched an animated movie after the mid 00s. "At last, the pieces of my grand plan fall into place," he said, in an evil, sultry purr. Then he laughed. It sounded very evil.

Behind him, Hunk cleared his throat tentatively. "Uh, boss? Yeah, you never actually told us how we're supposed to fight them. Like, did you have anything specific in mind, or should we just, I dunno, throw ourselves in their general direction?"

The CHAMP turned dramatically, catching Hunk with one eye over his shoulder in the kind of moment that really wanted to suddenly be compressed into widescreen for dramatic effect. "I'm not the details man, Hunk."

Hunk stared at him. "Who'd have guessed," he said, utterly deadpan. "Alright. C'mon guys, we'll figure out a real plan on the way."

They left him there, the CHAMP in his high castle, free to brood darkly beneath the dark and brooding skies.

It was dark. He brooded.

Lightning struck, far off, and the CHAP frowned. How had he reached this point, he wondered? How had it all come to this, to Connecticut, of all places. This place, with its secrets and its lies and its dead and screaming taxmen, its skies so dark and so brooding, perpetually fading into night even at like twelve thirty in the afternoon.

Surely there was a point at which things could have different. Perhaps if the war had not hardened him so. Perhaps if things had been different with Allura. Perhaps.

Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

Shiro gripped the Gun. His Gun. His only friend, since the accident. Since the war, really. It had hardened him.

"You understand me," he said, softly, looking down at the Gun. "You, at least, understand why."

"I got you fam," the Gun said. "You do what you gotta do."

"Thanks Gun."

"No prob bob."

Thunder cracked across the eternal Connecticut evening, as the blue lion soared in through shattered skies, towards hell and fire and destiny.

* * *

 

Connecticut was barren and foreign to the eyes of Zarkon. Eyes that had seen empires rise out of ashes and leaves, eyes that had seen the same empires fall to stardust and despair. Eyes that had seen vast puzzles and failed to solve them, eyes that had seen cookie jars and failed to retrieve treasures from them. Eyes that Hagar had fallen for and wrote incredible adjective-filled sentences about in her dream diary. These were eyes that had seen many things, but they had never seen the like of Connecticut. Not before. Hopefully, never again. It was a dark and terrible place.

Perry, however, had seen Connecticut before. Perry knew its horrors, had seen its hardness. Hardened by the war. By other things. He looked out from the Lion's cockpit, over the glowing, advanced Altean controls laced in his weird little platypus fingers, and his hard eyes hardly blinked. 

Below the soaring blue lion, the CHAMPION’s forces lay out on the ground like a picnic blanket, but less soft and friendly. Zarkon would not want to lay on that picnic blanket. No one would want to have a picnic on that blanket, because that blanket was full of swords and guns. There was no warmth to be found in that picnic blanket. The only feast you would be eating was the nourishment of pain, and the food of the wicker(d) basket of suffering.

Perry the Platypus looked down on all this with eyes like beady little beads of murderous intent and grim dark concentration. Zarkon didn’t know how a single agent could be filled with so much deep suffering and deeper darkness. It was like Perry had two pasts, one that was known to the public- the records of the OWCA, the War, the second dimension- and the one that was unknown. Something beyond the universe’s reach. Zarkon wanted to conquer the universe, but even more he wanted to know the other universe inside Perry the Platypussies’ head. Maybe one day, he could even conquer that one, too…

You could see that universe, in Perry’s eyes. Constantly, for Zarkon was not sure if he blinked. Like seriously, do Platypuses even eyelids what the fraggle rock. And is Perry like even a platypus jesus look at those  _ hands. _ Maybe Perry is something beyond a platypus? Idek man. 

This freight train of bad thoughts got slammed off the rails when a little light-up dealie on the lion's dashboard started screaming bloody murder. Which is like regular murder but with more blood. Basically it was loud, and it caught the attention of the hard men in the lion's cockpit, distracting them from their grim musings. Grim and dark musings.

Perry's hard eyes narrowed. "Missiles," he said, dismissively. "It's always missiles."

Zarkon walked to the back of the Lion's cockpit, walked out through the door, then walked down the ramp and stepped the heck out of its mouth. Was that even deployed? It didn’t matter. Zarkon did what he wanted, and the universe would obey. Plus, darn those lions like how are they even laid out anyway. Is there a diagram somewhere? Can we have layouts? How do the paladins get in so quickly. Like they need to be in there for universe saving missions, it’s gotta be fast, but the lions are like way bigger than them and there's no feasible way for the lions to even get down to their level and even then like how do they get in the mouth?? Is the cockpit just in the mouth because i thought it was in the eyes and that just is not working out for anyone anyways

_ Anyway, _ Zarkon fell through the grim dark Connecticut sky like a vicious force of manliness and alien vibes, like an anvil made of furry purple muscles and emperor class armour. He was like a living guitar solo, thrumming with a power beyond the ability of a narrator to describe any further. So I won't. (For now.)

He landed in that one superhero pose and looked up dramatically at the tall dark spire of the CHAMPION. He imagined he could see the CHAMPION looking down at him from the tip, but actually the CHAMPION was in the stairwell with about twenty floors left to go because  _ apparently _ the elevator was out of order.

Zarkon didn't have to wait long, however, as the CHAMPION's fell minions had already finished descending the dread stairwell. With a crack like a bowling ball scoring a strike, the doors of the darkly looming fortress parted, and from within rode the CHAP's terrible agents.

There were four of them, because the CHAMP was a big fan of Supernatural and really liked that bit with the horsemen. They rode colored robotic horses, mighty steeds that seemed somehow much grimmer and darker than Perry's lion. The dust rose behind them like a mighty cowl of badass shadow, and generally the whole scene looked like the cover of a mid-quality speed metal album from the mid-2000s being sold on the myspace page of a band which met in their bassist's parents' garage and recorded their "music" with a tape-it-to-the-side-of-your-computer USB microphone.

The first among them, clad in the vaguely whitish… uh… who the gosh darn dingity dong are these people Perry has the blue lion ah chutes and ladders wait so, wait, hold on guys, four horsemen are like white/red/black/pale so we need a… okay I got it.

The first among them, clad in the mighty _WHITE HORSE_ was 「 _FERB'S DAD_ 」 _._ He was the horseman of conquest. It might be pestilence but conquest sounds cooler 'cause it’s more vague and ominous. He doesn’t just defeat you, he _conquers_ you, then he sells your lands to oil companies. The same companies whose oil he uses to slick down his fantastic hair. His Stand is the 「Plain White T」, and all fear it’s green badge of disease and despair, resting peacefully over the left breast of the white horse’s horseman. The powers that green badge can wield…

The second, driving forward his bloody red mount, was  _ Keith, _ the burner of a thousand screaming suns. His voice rang like the fire of a million guns and his two trendy Converse shoes fell with the grim  _ thunk _ of an empire's end. He was grim, and silent, his one face without anger or remorse, belying the violence surging in his veins like a Big Gulp cup of 5 Hour Energy in the body of an impressionable six year old. He was ready to freaking go, dude. He was down to cut a man.

The third, atop the mighty black horse, was  _ Coran _ .

And the last of them, the largest and most terrible of all, astride a horse of pale and chilling buttermilk yellow, was  _ Hunk. _ The CHAMPION'S grim aide in his dastardly plans, said by some to be far more evil than even the great villain himself. They speak of him in the darkened halls of libraries, in the shadows of the statues of saints. They whisper of him, how his violence is callous, and unrestrained, how his wretched appetites lead him to devour all before him, be it food, utensil, or server. How his cunning slips into the mind and corrupts all. Some wonder if the CHAMP is not in fact merely an instrument, shaped and twisted by the sinister will of  _ HUNK The Vorer. _ He was death's foul incarnation, the mighty paladin of the pale horse.

Hunk sighed and kinda leaned his head on his hand, elbow up on the console. He turned on the radio and called Zarkon.

* * *

 

Zarkon picked up the phone, which was built into the wide collar of his armor. "Hello?" he said, looking to the majestic robo-stallions running towards him like a shining tide of blood from hell that was also on fire. "Oh, hi Hunk." He cleared his throat, and injected raw danger into his vocal chords. It hurt like the ding dong dickens, but it  _ did  _ make him sound about as badass as George Clooney with a grim look on his face riding a bear in a tuxedo with a grim look on his face while Scarlett Johansson, who is riding behind him, also on the bear, and also with a grim look on her face, fires a shotgun back at a swarm of aliens. (From the movie Alien and the movie Aliens.)

"Yeah, right, uh, I'm supposed to ask you to surrender and stuff?" Hunk sniffed and then yawned. "Uh, sorry. Yeah, so, please come quietly, mercy for you your family and your cow, evil laughter blah blah et cetera. Because we're evil and you're--well I guess you're evil too? Galactic emperor with a pet wizard? I dunno man. Either way, surrender now or face our… clavicle… math?" Hunk squinted at the sheet of paper he'd been reading off of. "Oh that bit's just ketchup. How the heck did he manage to get that much ketchup on--whatever. Terrible wrath. I'm pretty sure it's 'our terrible wrath.' So, y'know, do what you like."

"Alright, thanks bro," Zarkon said and hung up. He cast his eyes forward and surreptitiously put his hand over his neck where he'd injected the danger. It was bleeding a little. He popped open a compartment in his armor and took out a band aid. It had the powerpuff girls on it. Zarkon liked the Powerpuff Girls. They reminded him of everything he wanted to be in life. Sugar. Spice. Everything nice. Zarkon looked to the Powerpuff girls as his role models, the stars that inspired him to keep pursuing evil and all it’s forms. 

Zarkon, for the record, did not surrender. Zarkon, instead, drew his Black Bayard.

It was an ancient and powerful weapon.

It fired pretty good bullets too.

Slowly and then all at once, the blue lion dropped down behind him, beams of yellow light from it’s glowing LED eyes sweeping over the dark and ravaged Connecticut landscape. Giant, powerful, and  _ alive  _ in a way that was beyond anything science or technology could explain. Zarkon knew it was Perry behind the wheel, and this should have reassured him, but nothing could be more terrifying. The platypus could try and rule the lion, but the lion has it’s own sentience, it’s own soul and personal agenda. The CHAMPION’s horsemen couldn’t compare to the lion. 

Everyone knows horses don’t have souls. 

The reason they were fighting was already lost to the sands of time, forgotten in the space between the beats of Zarkon’s heart. Something about a kid dying? Unforgivable, grim, dark actions, the kind that would make Zarkon gag in disgust on a good day and blow up a planet to relieve the stress on a bad day. Zarkon would recommend blowing up planets to everyone. Hearing the screams of fear suddenly cut off in a earth shattering kaboom is intensely satisfying in the kind of way that Zarkon can only feel otherwise when he hears motivational quotes from the Powerpuff girls. 

“Ouch! The broccoli’s on the roof!”- Buttercup. 

Damn that broccoli. It always makes Zarkon misty-eyed. Buttercup was always Zarkon’s favourite. She’s just so spunky and adorable. He really liked when she did that thing with the green magic. It’s such a great thing. Just the fleeting memory of her is enough to inspire Zarkon to race into battle, yelling out his favourite battle chant, another quote from Buttercup. “OK, let’s take care of these knuckleheads and get back to school!”

Then his phone rang again. The haunting tune of (insert song here) rang out into the battlefield, and Zarkon was forced to disregard the four horsemen to turn and answer the call. Perry didn’t care that Zarkon wasn’t helping. Perry sought only to destroy and win, a beautiful semi-aquatic mammal slipping through the streams of blood like they were the clearest of waters. His natural habitat. The blue lion charged forward under the platypi’s forceful hand, engaging the horsemen without remorse or hesitation. 

“Hello? What is it, I’m busy,” Zarkon asked impatiently, watching Keith throw his horse into the blue lion over and over again, the fires of hell at his beck and call, screams echoing out as nothing worked. The glowing LED eyes of the lion looked down on the horseman of war, with all the disdain and contempt of a magical blue robot. It reminded Zarkon of the expression Hagar wore when she was practicing her disdainful and contemptuous look in the mirror. All in all, very disdainful. Incredibly contemptuous. 

The blue lion swatted the red horse and it’s infuriated rider aside with a single paw, it’s tail whipping around to fire a beam of light at Ferb’s dad on his chrome steed. Not that Zarkon knew anything about who the being called Ferb was. The name simply materialized in his head on the whispered word of the wind, fading away in seconds. No one could know the true name of the horseman of conquest. It was so removed from the canon universe that not even the CHAMPION knew the sweet touch of it’s eight letter sequence on his retinas. 

“Hey, Zarkon baby, sorry to call when you’re at work. Are you blowing something up? I can call back later,” Thace’s voice says. Immediately, Zarkon softens. It’s his sweet, precious honeybear, the only being that can make his ticker tick out of synch. When Thace is here, Zarkon knows not of seductive, alluring beings like Perry the Platypus. Thace is his rock. Zarkon is known to blow up other rocks. Thace is his only lasting rock. 

“No! No, it’s okay, I’m always free for you. What’s going on, my darling boob?” Zarkon asks, his voice lowered so no horsemen of the CHAMPION can hear his call and make fun of him. That’s never a fun way to spend a mission. Meanwhile, the blue lion knocks Coran aside like a pesky flea, though Keith is back up and as fierce as ever. Purple bolts start to streak over the battle like a fireworks display aimed towards the blue lion’s face. Faintly, in the distance, Zarkon can hear the CHAMPION cackling as he tries to snipe the elusive platypus. 

“Zarkon… I’m not sure how to say this. I suppose I can only do this in the most straightforward manner possible. I’m… not interested in being your boob anymore. I just can’t do it. I can’t be your bosom buddy. You’re an intergalactic conqueror. You’re… you’re evil, Zarkon. And I’m just me! The rebel out to stop you. We’d never work. We haven’t been working! I’ve seen the looks you’ve given to that platypus fellow. It’s only a matter of time before you’d cheat on me. I… I couldn’t deal with that, Zarkon. It’s either me or him or the galaxy. And we all know the only real winner in that situation is Hagar, who will definitely kidnap you and force you to enact scenes out of her dream diary with her at some point. It’s too much, Zarkon. Goodbye,” Thace whispers, the final note to shatter Zarkon’s heart completely. “My favourite powerpuff girl was always Bubbles.”

The betrayal. The devastation. In a single moment, Zarkon has lost it all.

Buzzing, humming noises from his collar’s built in phone is all he can hear. The battle has faded out around him, the blue lion lost to the fog, the screams of an enraged Keith drowned out by the sea of misery threatening to swamp him. 

Not Bubbles. Thace can’t like Bubbles. Thace can’t… Thace can’t have done this to him.

Zarkon can’t believe Thace has done this. He is so, so angry, his fists splitting as he pounds his hands into the rocky, desolate Connecticut ground. The only calling in his head is bloodlust for death now, the dying screams of others. If Zarkon has to kill a thousand planets to quench this fury, he will. 

“Don’t get me wrong. Destroying Townsville on a daily basis is a pretty good gig. But to be able to take away that which gave you so much joy, to destroy your happiness is just so much more satisfying to the soul.”- Mojo Jojo. 

Never has Zarkon needed the Powerpuff girls more than now. 

At some point, he fell to his knees, but an emperor must never remain there. Thace’s backstabbing may have gone through his heart, but Zarkon still has his legs. He can stand again. He can look forward. 

He can see the horsemen retreating, can see the blue lion powerless in the sand, can see even the purple bullet shooting straight for his skull. 

Zarkon is about to die. 

Purple is eclipsed by blue, and Perry the Platypus jumps up and takes the bullet through his tiny semi-aquatic chest, saving Zarkon’s life. Blood splatters across Zarkon’s slack face, the wind howling, the CHAMPION laughing maniacally in the distance. 

“ _ NO!”  _

The horsemen are gone, Perry the Platypus is gorgeous and grizzled and dead in his arms. Zarkon falls to his knees once more. The anger is gone. Thace is gone. All potential for future romance with the sexy platypus is gone. Everything he’s worked for is gone, except for his gigantic intergalactic dictatorship. But what does that matter without his semi-aquatic egg-laying love, Thace? 

Now, in the dust of Connecticut and the shadow of the CHAMPION’s hideout, all Zarkon has are tears.

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome.
> 
> Grassepi's [Tumblr](http://grassepi.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/its_hazelgrace)
> 
> WhatOtherPlanet has a tumblr but hasn't touched it in a long while so who cares, they can also be found at [Twitter](https://twitter.com/YellHead)


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